Apocalypse Revealed # 788
788. 18:19 "And they put dust on their heads and cried out, weeping and mourning, and saying, 'Woe, woe, that great city!'" This symbolizes their interior and exterior grief and mourning, which is a lamentation that so eminent a religion was completely destroyed and condemned.
Putting dust on their heads symbolizes their interior and exterior grief and mourning over the destruction and damnation, as we will show below. To cry out, weeping and mourning, symbolizes their exterior grief and mourning - to weep symbolizing a mourning of the soul, and to grieve a grief of the heart. "Woe, woe, that great city!" symbolizes a grievous lamentation over the destruction and damnation. That "woe" symbolizes a lamentation over a calamity, misfortune, or damnation, and that "woe, woe," therefore symbolizes a grievous lamentation, may be seen in nos. 416, 769, 785; and that the city symbolizes the Roman Catholic religion may be seen in no. 785 and elsewhere.
That putting dust on the head symbolizes an interior grief and mourning over a destruction and damnation is clear from the following passages:
They will cry bitterly and cast dust on their heads; they will roll about in ashes. (Ezekiel 27:30)
(The daughters) of Zion sit on the ground...; they have cast dust on their heads... (Lamentations 2:10)
(Job's friends) rent their tunics and sprinkled dust upon their heads... (Job 2:12)
Come down and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon; sit on the ground without a throne... (Isaiah 47:1)
And so on elsewhere.
The people put dust on their heads when they grieved deeply, because dust symbolized something damned, as is apparent from Genesis 3:14, Matthew 10:14, Mark 6:11, Luke 10:10-12, and dust on the head represented the people's acknowledgment that of themselves they were damned, and thus their repentance, as in Matthew 11:21, Luke 10:13.
Dust symbolizes something damned because the land over the hells in the spiritual world consists of nothing but dust, without grass or plants.
Job 2
1
Again it happened on the day when the God's sons came to present themselves before Yahweh, that Satan came also among them to present himself before Yahweh.
2
Yahweh said to Satan, "Where have you come from?" Satan answered Yahweh, and said, "From going back and forth in the earth, and from walking up and down in it."
3
Yahweh said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job? For there is none like him in the earth, a blameless and an upright man, one who fears God, and turns away from evil. He still maintains his integrity, although you incited me against him, to ruin him without cause."
4
Satan answered Yahweh, and said, "Skin for Skin. Yes, all that a man has he will give for his life.
5
But put forth your hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will renounce you to your face."
6
Yahweh said to Satan, "Behold, he is in your hand. Only spare his life."
7
So Satan went forth from the presence of Yahweh, and struck Job with painful sores from the sole of his foot to his head.
8
He took for himself a potsherd to scrape himself with, and he sat among the ashes.
9
Then his wife said to him, "Do you still maintain your integrity? Renounce God, and die."
10
But he said to her, "You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. What? Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?" In all this Job didn't sin with his lips.
11
Now when Job's three friends heard of all this evil that had come on him, they each came from his own place: Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite, and they made an appointment together to come to sympathize with him and to comfort him.
12
When they lifted up their eyes from a distance, and didn't recognize him, they raised their voices, and wept; and they each tore his robe, and sprinkled dust on their heads toward the sky.
13
So they sat down with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spoke a word to him, for they saw that his grief was very great.
